Acquired Book By: I started hosting with Prism Book Tours at the end of [2017], having noticed the badge on Tressa’s blog (Wishful Endings) whilst I was visiting as we would partake in the same blog tours and/or book blogosphere memes. I had to put the memes on hold for several months (until I started to resume them (with Top Ten Tuesday) in January 2018). When I enquiried about hosting for Prism, I found I liked the niche of authors and stories they were featuring regularly. This is how I came to love discovering the Harlequin Heartwarming authors & series as much as it has been an honour to regularly request INSPY stories and authors. Whenever I host for Prism, I know I am in for an uplifting read and a journey into the stories which give me a lot of joy to find in my readerly queue of #nextreads. It is an honour to be a part of their team of book bloggers.
I received a complimentary copy of “Coming Home to Mercy” direct from the author Michelle de Bruin exchange for an honest review. I did not receive compensation for my opinions or thoughts shared herein.
Why I am sharing a shorter review about “Coming Home to Mercy”:
I’ve been plagued recently with a lot of fierce lightning storms (hence why content on Jorie Loves A Story has been a bit remiss and absent. Whilst at the same time, the climatic patterns have been keeping our temperatures hovering round 100-110F everyday which is giving me a load of grief as I’m succumbing to heat exhaustion several times a week as our humidity is extremely equal and as dangerously high as our actual temperatures! Therefore, despite my best intentions, I was offline for most of the past week (ie. storms and technology are not a good mix on a good day, throw in batches of lightning storms and its toxic!) and by the time I could re-emerge, I was either a) dearly exhausted by the heat or b) without enough time before/after work to finish reading this story in full.
I decided to write a shorter glimpse into the book itself and talk about how it was to settle into the rhythm of the story for the blog tour. This is only my second story I’ve read by this author and what drew my eye towards it was the prospect of reading about Aviation and Flight History as I’ve always had a keen eye of curiosity on the history of flight and especially how we’ve gone from those early origins in aeroplanes and short flights to the incredible ways in which we can circumnavigate the world on long hauls and flights which connect all of us together.
Plus, I happen to love diving into #HistRom as their always a delightful respite and a lovely comfort read to have whenever life is full of chaos; a bit of calm in the storms!
Coming Home to Mercy
Subtitle: Coming Home series : Book One
by Ms Michelle De Bruin
Source: Author via Prism Book Tours
A society woman leaves her comfortable lifestyle so that she can help her daughter adjust to the arrival of twin sons in a small town where the courageous doctor teaches her about taking risks.
Wealthy and sociable Margaret Millerson has always thought of her brother’s Chicago mansion as her home. But when she receives the telephone call that her daughter has given birth to twins three weeks ahead of the expected due date, Margaret must leave her comfortable home, her family, and her friends to travel out of state. While she is helping her daughter care for the infants, Margaret becomes reacquainted with the town’s doctor, Matthew Kaldenberg.
Dr. Matthew Kaldenberg stays busy caring for the health of the citizens of his small town. His profession offers him daily practice in defeating death, his greatest enemy. During the twenty years since losing his own wife and baby in childbirth, Matthew has saved his money for the purchase of a flying machine. But when Matthew takes Margaret for flights on his biplane, he learns that his dreams of rising above the griefs and losses of his past come with a cost. He doesn’t want to lose the trust of the people he cares about most, or the chance at a relationship with Margaret.
Both Matthew and Margaret must make difficult decisions to hold on to the love they have discovered. Will Matthew’s heart recover from sorrow? Will Margaret find her true home?
Places to find the book:
ISBN: 978-1649171436
Published by Scrivenings Press
on 14th August, 2021
Format: Trade Paperback
Pages: 304
The Coming Home series:
Coming Home to Mercy (book one)
Published by: Scrivenings Press (@ScriveningsLLC)
co-owned by Shannon Vannatter (@stvauthor)
I was happily surprised to discover this Indie Publisher is co-owned by Ms Vannatter as when I first came across the book blogosphere in (2012) the year before I created and developed Jorie Loves A Story – this author’s blog was one of my mainstays wherein I would read, comment and visit. She is one of the authors’ who has a blog which connects readers to writers and hosts bookaways, too. In the world of INSPY she was one of the authors I enjoyed visiting with due to how she kept her blog and the conversations with authors both approachable but also entertaining to where you learnt something about their stories and their craft for writing. She usually breaks up her blog features into two parts, too which gives you an extra moment to visit with her featured authors.
Formats Available: Paperback and Ebook
Converse via: #HistFic or #HistoricalFiction
as well as #HistRom or #HistoricalRomance,
#IndieAuthor, #IndieChristian, #INSPYRomance
About Ms Michelle De Bruin
Michelle De Bruin grew up in Southern Iowa and graduated from Eddyville High School. These beautiful memories of childhood spent on her family’s farm are the inspiration to the setting in the books of the Tomorrow series.
After high school, Michelle received an Associate’s Degree in Office Management from Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. She returned to the family farm and later married Tom De Bruin.
Tom and Michelle and their two teenage sons, Mark and John, live in Pella where Michelle works as the Spiritual Services Facilitator for Christian Opportunity Center. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Music and in Religion with a Christian Ministries emphasis from Central College in Pella, Iowa.
In 2015, Michelle began writing and joined the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) where she discovered that the stories she wrote for fun might actually amount to something. She finished her manuscript for Hope for Tomorrow and eventually found a home for it with a small publisher of Christian fiction.
Characters that bring to life the delights of farm and small town living, whispers of Dutch heritage, and Christian faith make Michelle’s stories distinct.
| Coming Home to Mercy by Michelle De Bruin |
In the beginning, we’re on the foot heels of hearing about the new birth of a set of twins into a family who were taken by happy surprise for two births rather than the one they were expecting! I love whenever twins are inclusive of a Historical story as not many writers talk about twin births and of course, the further you go back into History, the harder those kinds of births were for both the Mums and the babes; as it was quite critical they were either monitored straight after birth or under doctor’s care inclusively due to the higher risk to those deliveries.
Margaret was a kind-hearted woman in her home community and was one to find ways to volunteer whenever a need arose which might need attention. Which is how we first found her in the throes of throwing a ball ahead of the news of her new grandsons arrival. It was afterwards, we followed in her stead as she took a train across country to be with them and her family; as who wants to stay home when their are grandchildren? Hearing about her train travel brought back my own delight in travelling on the rails as you get to see the country differently from that viewpoint than you would a car whilst the sheer joy of travelling is one that cannot be extinguished even if you take a bit of a break from going afield.
I liked how De Bruin had stitched into her character’s story a bit of an affection and kindling of interest in the grandchildren’s doctor. It was a charming part of Margaret’s character – how she had pined to learn more about him and how she’d oft thought of him since she had first met him quite a bit ago in the timeline of the story. Plus, of course, it was lovely for De Bruin to mention how sometimes these romances can be one street affairs and not be connected on the other end. It is that mystery which keeps you curious about Margaret’s situation and of course, that kind of suspense in wanting to see the doctor in the story emerge in the foreground to determine his own interests in Margaret as well; if any were to be had!
The best bit of course is arriving at the end of my readings thus far into the story and the promise of seeing Margaret’s dearest wish coming closer to her own intuitive hopes for herself and the doctor. It is one thing to understand how a woman can become smitten by a bloke but it was cleverly spun to see how a bloke might become equally smitten with a woman! I definitely want to read further into how both Margaret and the doctor might connect and if perhaps, there is a strong enough connection there for the seed of love to bloom!
It was here where we saw Margaret have a full stirring of thought, too. About her life – from the past where she raised her family to the future where she was uncertain where her place might come to roost. She had a comfortable familiarity with her life in Chicago wherein her life as a widower is far easier and more freeing than if she had still been married but it was this new prospect of hers to be with her grandchildren I think might be swinging her heart in a new direction to undertake instead. There is one thing for a comfortable life but it is another to reconsider where your meant to be vs where you’d settled into being after one chapter of your life closed. I had a feeling Margaret might desire to relocate if only to have a new adventure after the last one had already felt fulfilled.
| On the Historical writing styling of Michelle De Bruin |
One of the first things I noticed De Bruin focused on was asserting us into this Historical timescape – pulling back the veil so to speak and representing this moment in time as if the technology being used inside the story was as wholly new and curious to us as it were to her characters; such as the use of the telephone and how complicated that could become as during this era in particular (and in successive ones lateron) phones were not entirely private communication options as not everyone could afford to have an exclusively private line installed. Thereby, it is how she showcased this communal method of communicating and the curiosities of how the phone functioned overall was quite delightful as it shows how initially it was still quite the wonder how you could erase miles with the ease of a phone call.
This was something I understood well myself when I used to ring friends overseas – especially for the first time, whenever I had to connect to a long distance operator to either a) place the call itself or b) source out the number directly to surprise the friend! I have a lot of good memories calling different countries and of course, part of that memory is also in sorting out world time zones which I admit, I did not always master the art of not waking someone up in the middle of the night! Laughs. Still, it never failed to hit me: how you can erase international time zones with a connected call and if your lucky to have a friend over the International Date Line – your literally calling them in the ‘past’ and their answering in the ‘future’!!
I didn’t get to dip too much into the aviation side of the story, as my readings right now focused more on settling into the characters’ lives as we meet them in the beginning of the story whilst also getting acquainted with the setting and the timescape. On both, I felt De Bruin did a good job of angling us into the timeline of her story whilst giving us things to chew on for future chapters – especially how two persons of a certain age are still singletons and how their contemplating wanting to change their relationship status but are a bit on the fence about how to approach that situation as neither of them feel worthy of the others affection! And, of course, for a Historical Romance reader (such as I) that is good fodder to proceed on whilst reading more of the story which is now afoot!
This blog tour was courtesy of: Prism Book Tours
By clicking this badge you can find out about the giveaway associated with the tour;
my particular tour stop doesn’t host the giveaway as I’m a review stop, however,
you’ll find many other bloggers who are hosting the information!
readers who gravitate towards the same stories to read.
{SOURCES: Cover art of “Coming Home to Mercy”, synopsis of “Coming Home to Mercy”, the photo and biography of the author Michelle De Bruin as well as the blog tour banner and The Prism Book Tours badge were all provided by Prism Book Tours and used with permission. Post dividers by Fun Stuff for Your Blog via Pure Imagination. Tweets embedded by codes provided by Twitter. Blog graphics created by Jorie via Canva: #25PagePreview banner, Book Spotlight banner and the Comment Box Banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2021.
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I felt De Bruin did a good job of angling us into the timeline of her story whilst giving us things to chew on for future chapters; definitely a good opener for any #HistRom reader who likes slow burn romances!
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— Jorie Story 📖🎧 (@joriestory) August 20, 2021
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
- 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge
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